The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  On the whole, I feel inclined to risk another epithet in this preliminary skirmishing round Reggie. Yes—indubitably boyish. By boyish, I mean the power of enjoying life without thinking about it. Such a gift—the gift of serene receptiveness, of complete irresponsibility—is rare, fascinating and, at times, intensely irritating. The majority of ordinary work-a-day folk have, as Eva said, a certain capacity for doing their duty, and forming theories about it. Reggie knew no obscure idol called Duty, to which he owed obedience, but he was ruled by a quantity of cleanly, wholesome instincts, that made him honest, good-natured, lovable and affectionate. The worst of drawing your morality from the springs of your nature is that, if a mischievous hand gets to meddling with those springs, to diverting the course of the water, or, perhaps, putting a little piece of something not entirely wholesome in that clear fountain, your moral digestion is considerably disorganised. At the same time, an innate morality is productive of a more lively faith than a collection of dried plants from the gardens of other men’s experience. They may be the same plants, but they are alive, not pressed and sapless.

  Reggie never hazarded any guesses as to the answer of that Gordian riddle called life. The how, why and wherefore of existence cannot even be said to have been uninteresting to him—such questions did not exist for him at all. But, by virtue of an innate sweetness of disposition, he had an undoubted capacity for being content to live, and be nice to those in the same predicament of living as himself. Such natures are not often saddled with great mental gifts; but very often hold a great capacity for loving and being loved, with the restful love one feels for shady places on dusty roads, for the “times of refreshing” that are so divinely human. This gift is one which many children possess, and which few retain beyond childhood. It is dangerous, fascinating, dazzling, seductive and very unsettling, but it is very sweet.

  This fathom of well-bred, boyish, English life was nearly asleep, but not quite. In fact, a very slight sound made him particularly wakeful, for it was a sound for which he had been listening—the sound of carriage wheels outside. He went quickly out of the room, and was in the hall before the front door was opened. Ah! Well, the meeting of two young lovers is very pretty, but it has happened before.

  Percy arrived in time for dinner, and when Mr. Davenport retired from the smoking-room soon after eleven, he left there the two young men, who did not seem inclined to go to bed. Reggie, in fact, had an alarming number of things to say, and he proceeded to say them with guileless straightforwardness.

  “I am awfully glad you were able to come,” he began; “I wanted you to see Gertrude very much. You must be my best man, you know. We’re not going to be married yet; not for a year. You see, I was half-engaged when I went to India, and we settled to wait then for two years. Well, one year’s gone, that’s something.”

  “You’re a detestably lucky fellow,” said Percy, on whom a charmingly pretty and thoroughly nice girl had made her legitimate impression.

  “Oh! I know I am; detestably lucky, as you say. Doesn’t she sing beautifully, too? Hang it all, I won’t talk about it, or else I shall go on for ever, and it’s rather dull for you.”

  Percy laughed.

  “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m very happy. Pour out your joyful soul, but pass me a cigar first.”

  “Cigars!” said Reggie. “I really had quite forgotten about smoking. That’s what comes of being in love. Really, old fellow, you had better fall in love as soon as you possibly can. Depend upon it, there’s nothing like it. Here, catch!”

  Reggie chucked a cigar case across to him.

  “Have you seen your new cousin yet?” asked Percy.

  “Who? Oh, Lady Hayes. No, I haven’t. She’s perfectly lovely, isn’t she?”

  “Eva has always been considered good-looking,” remarked the other solemnly.

  “I don’t particularly care for Hayes himself,” said Reggie. “He’s so awfully polite and dried up. But I expect your sister’s made him wake up a bit. I want to know her. Where is she?”

  “They’re abroad again, at present. Jim Armine’s with them.”

  “Jim Armine?” said Reggie, doubtfully. “That pale chap with a big place in Somersetshire?”

  “Probably the same. I don’t know why Eva likes him so. I can’t bear him.”

  “He’s an oily sort of fellow,” remarked Reggie, frankly. “But lots of women like him. He’s too clever for me. I’m awfully stupid, you know.”

  “They met him abroad on their honeymoon,” said Percy, “and he hung about a good deal, I fancy.”

  “I’m blowed if I’ll have another man hanging about on my honeymoon,” said Reggie.

  “No; I don’t suppose you will. It does seem one too many to the unbiassed mind. Rather like the serpent in paradise, who was certainly de trop.”

  “What serpent?” said Reggie, who was obviously thinking of something else. “Oh, I see, the devil, you mean.”

  “No, I didn’t mean the devil exactly; I meant any third person.”

  “We’re going shooting tomorrow over the High Croft,” said Reggie, after a pause, in which he had determined, by a rapid mental process, that he was unable to initiate any more statements on the subject of the serpent, “and Gertrude and mother are going to bring us lunch. You and father will have to shoot alone after lunch; I’m going to drive on with Gertrude, just round about and home again.”

  Gertrude Carston certainly seemed a most desirable partner for Reggie; they were really both of them detestably lucky people. She had considerable beauty, of a large, breezy order; she was quite as adorably child-like as he, and showed quite as few signs of any tendency to grow up. She was fond of hunting, lawn-tennis, animals, loud hymns, anything, in fact, of a pronounced and intelligible stamp; she was quite ridiculously fond of Reggie, and they both behaved in the foolish, delightful manner in which people in such a predicament do behave. They had both settled to get up early the next morning and have a short walk before breakfast, which was not till a quarter to ten, but in the morning they both felt it quite impossible to do so, and came down feebly a few minutes after the gong had sounded, and pretended that they had been up an immense time waiting for the other, till that particularly flimsy falsehood broke down, and they both laughed prodigiously. It was obviously a good, honest love-match; for each of them only the other existed, in no ethereal, mysterious form, but simply as a capital, honest human being, lovable in every part. There were no regrets, no unsatisfied longings, no sentimental, half-morbid affection that was exacting or jealous. Love, like Janus of old, is a two-headed god. On some he smiles, to others his eyes are full of strange, bewildering doubts; on his lips there is a smile that is half a sigh, that wakes at times a tumultuous happiness, a bitter aching at others, and never brings content. That love may be more complex, more worthy of the agonised questionings with which men and women have worshipped him, more deserving of the reproach, the longing, the dread, the reviling, that has found its expression in bitter verses and heart-broken epigrams, but the simple, smiling face is there for some to see, and those are blest who see it. Their love may be on a lower level, but it is very sweet, and lies among pleasant gardens and by melodious streams; for such there is no mountain top, compassed about by heaven; earth lies about them, not beneath them, and for them there is no painful climbing, no bleeding hands or panting breasts, and perhaps, at the top, nothing but clouds and cold, palpable mist.

  Such, at any rate, was their love at present, yet nothing is safe in this uncertain world. An earthquake may rend the pleasant garden, an east wind may wither its flowers, drought may drink up its melodious stream. But now it was the June of love, and the garden was very fair.

  It was nearly luncheon time, and Reggie, in spite of the woodcock, looked on to the cottage, where a thin, blue smoke rose, on a hill above the trees, wondering whether Gertrude had come yet. The beat lay over uneven ground, with some thick cover, interspersed with heathery, open places, on the edges of which many woodcock rose in silent and g
hostly flight for the last time. Reggie was an excellent shot, and was having a match with Percy—a shilling a woodcock—which promised to be an investment with good security, and quick returns. He was just arguing a disputed point, in which Percy stoutly upheld that a certain bird, at which they had fired simultaneously, was his own, not Reggie’s, and that Reggie ought never to have shot at it, as it did not rise to him, when Gertrude appeared on the scene.

  She had seen the party approaching from the cottage, and, as it was cold, she had walked on to meet them.

  Percy felt much evil satisfaction at her appearance. The ways of women at shooting parties were known to him. Reggie was looking about in a bush, with the keepers, for a bird he had killed, and Gertrude stopped with him. She fully justified Percy’s expectations.

  “Oh! Reggie, what a pretty bird. It’s an awful shame to shoot them. Poor dear! Oh! I am sure I saw it flap its wings. It can’t be dead. Oh! Do kill it quick. I think you’re perfectly brutal. Now, you’ve killed it,” she added with reproach, as if the object of shooting woodcock was to render them immortal.

  They soon caught up the others, and Percy’s wicked wish was fulfilled. No man in the world can shoot when his affianced is walking by him, making remarks on the weather, and on his homespun stockings, and telling him that she was sure he didn’t hold his gun straight that time. But Reggie did not feel as if he had lost very much, when he handed Percy one-and-ninepence at lunch, which was the nearest equivalent he had for two shillings.

  Mrs. Davenport was sitting by the fire when they came in, preferring to get warm passively, rather than actively.

  “Well, boys,” she said, “have you had good sport? Fifteen woodcock? How jolly!”

  “And we should have got four more if Gertrude hadn’t joined us,” said Reggie. “Why did you let her come, mother?”

  Gertrude looked at him in genuine, wide-eyed astonishment.

  “What have I done, you stupid boy?” she exclaimed. “I only told you to hold your gun straighter; you were aiming at least five feet from the bird. Besides, it’s horrid to kill woodcock; they’re such jolly little beasts—birds, I mean.”

  “Then why did you tell me to aim straighter?” asked Reggie, with reason.

  “Oh, I thought it would please you to kill them, my lord,” she said. “At least, that’s why you went out, wasn’t it?”

  Reggie was emptying his pockets of cartridges in the porch, and Gertrude was standing in the doorway, so that they were in comparative privacy.

  “Would you rather please me than save the woodcock?” he asked softly.

  “Reggie, I know those cartridges will go off if you drop them about so. Yes, oh the whole, I would. How dirty your hands are. Oh! Is that blood on them?”

  “No, dear, it’s red paint, like what the Indians put on when they go out hunting.”

  “You extremely silly boy. Go and wash them, and then come to lunch. I’ll come with you to the little pump round the corner. You can’t be trusted alone.”

  “You’ll catch cold standing about,” said Reggie, not without a purpose.

  “No more than you will. Besides, I want to talk to you.”

  “Talk away, I’m listening.”

  “Oh, well, it’s nothing, really. I only meant to chat.”

  “Let’s chat, then.”

  “Well, stoop down, while I pump on your hands. Do you know, I’m rather happy.”

  “What a funny coincidence; so am I.”

  And they went back to the house, feeling that they had had quite a successful conversation. But that was all they said.

  Mr. Davenport was to join them after lunch, and go on shooting with Percy, and they had nearly finished when he entered. He was a stout, hearty-looking man of fifty, and inexpressible satisfaction was his normal expression.

  “Well, you people look pretty comfortable,” he said. “What sport, Reggie?”

  “Oh! Rabbits, lots of them, a few hares, ditto pheasants, and fifteen woodcock,” said Reggie, with his month full of bread and cheese, whose naturally healthy appetite had not been spoiled by love.

  “Reggie’s going to take Gertrude a drive after lunch,” said Mrs. Davenport; “and I shall walk home; I want a walk.”

  Gertrude and Reggie looked at each other, but acquiesced.

  “Reggie, dear, give Gertrude my furs. She will be cold driving, and I sha’n’t want them walking,” said Mrs. Davenport, as the two started to go.

  Reggie took them, and with those little attentions that a woman loves so much when they are offered by somebody, wrapped them closely round her.

  “Well, I’m sure I ought to be warm enough,” she said, as they left the door.

  “Reggie will take off his coat if you’re not, I daresay,” murmured Mrs. Davenport, as she watched them start. “Dear boy, how happy he is.”

  “He hasn’t got much to complain of,” said his father. “How old it makes one feel.”

  He stretched out his hand to his wife, and she took it silently. Parents feel old and young when they see the young birds mate.

  “Reggie was recommending me to fall in love as quickly as possible, last night,” remarked Percy. “He said there was nothing like it.”

  Mr. Davenport laughed.

  “Cheeky young brute,” he said. “He gives himself the airs of an old married man. He quite patronised his uncle the other day, because he was a bachelor. He and Gertrude together don’t make up more than forty-five years between them.”

  “Reggie’s only just twenty-four,” said Mrs. Davenport, “and she’s barely twenty. How dreadfully funny their first attempt at housekeeping will be. Reggie never knows what he’s eating, as long as there’s plenty of it, and I don’t think she does either.”

  “Ah! Well, shoulder of mutton and love is a very good diet,” said his father. “Are you ready, Percy? If so, we’ll be off.”

  Mrs. Davenport sat a little longer over the fire before she set out on her homeward walk, and observed, with some annoyance, that it had begun to snow heavily, and half wished she had driven home with Reggie. The keeper’s wife wanted to send a boy with her, as the short cut across country, which she meant to take, was hardly more than a sheep-track, running across a flat stretch of bleak moorland.

  There is, perhaps, nothing so bewildering as a snow-storm. The thick net-work of falling flakes conceals all but the nearest objects; and the small, familiar landmarks of the path are soon lost under the white trouble. The consequence was that, half-an-hour after Mrs. Davenport had started, she was entirely at sea as to her position, and, after trying in vain to retrace her steps, she found herself, at the end of an hour’s tedious tramp, at a little cottage some six miles from home. She was known to the labourer who lived there, but, as she was too tired to continue walking through the snow that was already beginning to lie somewhat thickly on the path, he sent out a lad to the neighbouring village to procure any sort of conveyance. All this took time, and Mrs. Davenport was impatient, for the sake of those at home, to get off as soon as possible. Her husband, she knew, would be very anxious; and there were people coming to dinner.

  Meanwhile, Reggie and Gertrude had got safely home after a most satisfactory drive. In fact, they rather liked the snow, which compelled them to go slower, for the sake of that sense of extreme privacy—a sort of cutting off from the rest of the world—which it lent them. He had said once, “I am afraid mother will have a horrid walk,” and Gertrude was filled with an evanescent compunction for having taken her furs, but no more allusion was made to it.

  They reached home about half-past four, and, half-an-hour later, were joined by the shooters, who had given up when the snow began in earnest. They were sitting at tea in the dark, oak-panelled hall, by a splendid fire of logs when Mr. Davenport suddenly said—

  “I suppose your mother is changing her things upstairs, Reggie?”

  Reggie was sitting on the floor, with his long legs drawn up, and a tea-cup balanced somewhat precariously on his knees. His back was supported against
the head of the sofa, on which Gertrude was sitting. She had put on an amazing tea-gown, of some dark, mazarine stuff, trimmed with large bunches of lace, and was feeling intensely happy and rather languid after the day in the cold air. She had just asked Reggie some question, and he did not hear, or, at any rate, did not fully take in his father’s remark.

  Ten minutes passed, and Mr. Davenport rose to go.

  “You’d better ring the bell, Reggie,” he said, “and get your mother’s maid to take her some tea upstairs, or it will be getting cold. I am afraid she must have got very wet.”

  “I don’t think mother’s come in yet,” said Reggie, placidly.

  “Not in yet,” he said quickly. “Why didn’t you tell me? She must have lost her way over the High Croft.”

  The irrepressible satisfaction had died out of his face. He rang the bell sharply.

  “Tell two men to go at once, with lanterns, over the High Croft. Mrs. Davenport must have lost her way.”

  Gertrude got up.

  “You’re not anxious about her, are you?”

  “No, no, dear,” said he, “but it’s a horrid night. The snow may be lying very thick, and perhaps she has lost her path. There’s no anxiety.”

  Gertrude looked down with a little impatience at her long-limbed lover.

  “Reggie, you goose, why didn’t you remember she hadn’t come in?”

  Reggie looked up.

  “I thought nothing about it. There are lots of cottages about. It was stupid of me to forget. Can I do anything, father? Shall I go out with the men?”